


I Heard a Scream

by Samking



Series: In the Woods Somewhere [2]
Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode 11, M/M, Perdition Woods, The Shadows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 23:55:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21044882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samking/pseuds/Samking
Summary: Jack and Ben get a mysterious tape, and decide to play it on the air.Part of my Sammy is Taken AU.





	I Heard a Scream

“Look at this,” Ben said holding out a cassette tap that he had just gone to retrieve from their mail slot at the behest of the second to last weird phone call they had just received. Jack glanced up at the calendar that one of the day time shows used to mark down when they had guest coming instead of keeping it in their office like the rest of the shows did. October first, hopefully this wasn’t indicative of how the rest of the month was going to go.

  
“A cassette?” Jack asked, it was better than most of what Jack had thought of when the strange-ass voice had told them to go check their mail slot at just before five in the morning.

  
“Yeah,” Ben said and pointed to a strip of tape that was on top of it. “It says DD.”

  
“Maybe it stands for Duran Duran?” Jack said with a grin. He loved that band, back in college he and Sammy used to go to karaoke bars with Lily sometimes and somehow, he would usually end up singing something by Duran Duran. Rio was a particular favorite.

“We should play this.” Ben said ignoring Jack’s last remarks.

  
“Maybe we should listen to this first.” The producer in Jack was saying never to play anything that he hadn’t first listened to in case there was someone getting murdered on the other end. Especially if its been delivered to your door at five in the morning. Jack had heard some interesting stories from some of the other producers as the XM radio station back in Denver.

  
“We’ll be fine,” Ben said as he stuck the tap in the tape player that was attached to their sound board. “I have the fastest finger in the tri-state area.”  
“Uh-huh.” Jack said, laughing slightly. Then he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I wonder if Emily-”

  
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!” Ben said turning beet red. “You know what, let’s just- let’s just listen to the tape. We’ll be fine. I’ll keep my finger on the dump button if anything happens.”

  
“You’re so easy,” Jack said affectionately. If Ben hadn’t been about three inches out of reach and wearing a set of headphones, he would have reached over to ruffle Ben’s hair. At least Sammy had the decency to have longer hair that Jack could reach over and play with when he’d gotten cute on air.

  
Jack pushed that thought away, he couldn’t think about Sammy right now. He had a job to do. He would go to the library later anyway to do research, he was pretty sure that he and Emily were about to hit a break through on Perdition Woods.

  
“Yeah, yeah.” Ben said. “Where’s the play button on this hunk of junk? Merve, why do we have a cassette player in the studio, its 2015!”

  
“I think you know why.”

  
“I’m excited,” Ben proclaimed as he hit the play button.

  
“This is Lance McCoy,” an Australian accented man came in through Jack’s headset, “checking in. I’m about five kilometers off of the Stealth Ridge Trail now. It’s heavily wooded, and just getting thicker.”

  
Ben hit the pause button and Jack turned to look at him not understanding why Ben had hit the pause button on the tape. Nothing that had been said was going to get them in trouble with the FCC. “Do you know him?” Jack asked. He was pretty sure he’d remember a guy with an Australian accent walking around King Falls, but you never know.

  
“Never heard of him,” Ben said frowning. “But if the R word was politically correct for broadcast, I’d totally use it for him right now. That trail is like the boonies within the boonies.” Jack frowned not quite understanding what Ben was getting at.

  
Stealth Ridge did sound familiar though. Jack couldn’t place where he’d heard it before.

  
“So far so good,” came Lance’s voice back over the headset when Ben pressed the play button again. “I was a bit worried with all the tall tales surrounding the Devil’s Doorstep. I guess that’s why I’m talking to you, tracing my steps. Nothing strange or out of the ordinary. I have noticed the lack of wildlife and birds to be this far in the bush.” Ben hit the pause button again.

  
Jack had grown still at the mention of the Devil’s Doorstep, he knew where he’d heard the name of Stealth Ridge. It was in Perdition Woods. “There’s no way,” Ben said shaking his head. “Definitely the R word or has a death wish or both.”

  
“Why would someone seek out the Devil’s Doorstep?” Jack asked. “Like I understand thrill seeking, but that just seems a bit extreme to me.” Ben looked at him in confusion, and then his face turned to realization.

  
“Right your book,” Ben said. “I was wondering how you knew.”

  
“Well that and it’s not as if the Devil’s Doorstep isn’t on every top ten most haunted places in the world list.” Ben rolled his eyes at Jack’s snark. Jack glanced at the cassette tape, how far had the man gotten? How close to the cave that was said to house a door to another world? How close had he gotten to entering… to Sammy? To where Jack needed to go… eventually when he figured out how to get Sammy safely from the Void.

  
Ben hit the play button again. “Right, it’s about thirty minutes from my last check in. My mobile’s lost signal. It looks like it’s just you and me pal. I lost a little bit of time, got turned around for a few minutes back. All the paths are starting to look really similar so it’s starting to-” The man, Lance, trailed off again and Jack swore that he was starting to hear them… the whispers. The chanting. He’d read about it before in people’s accounts of trying to find the Devil’s Doorstep. “Still no wildlife, I don’t know if any men or women have ever stepped where I’m stepping. I kinda like that.”

  
Ben hit the pause button again. “Did you hear it?” Jack asked, he felt a bit spooked listening. There was a part of him that wanted to tell Ben to stop the tape and to throw it out, that they shouldn’t listen to it. But there was another part of him that needed to hear what Lance had to say, to know why the tape was delivered to them this morning. To know if there was something- anything on that tape that could help him find Sammy.

  
“Nope, nope, no singing,” Ben said looking about as freaked out as Jack felt.

  
“I didn’t say singing,” Jack replied, “and it was more like chanting.”

  
“I didn’t hear anything.”

  
“It’s starting to get colder now,” came Lance’s voice back over the headset. Had Ben hit the play button again? “Darker. That and my mind is playing the tiniest of tricks on me. Voices, singing, whispers. It’s- it’s head games. Nothing is going to stop me from making it to the gate.” Ben stopped the tape again.

  
“I think that’s enough,” Ben said getting ready to eject the tape from the cassette player.

  
“No,” Jack stated firmly. “We need to finish it.” He needed to finish it and find out what happened to Lance. Needed to find out all that he could about the Gate.

  
“Look, I know you’re writing a book on Perdition Woods, but I don’t think-” Ben protested.

  
“I need to hear this.”

  
Ben sighed. “Fine.” And he hit the play button again.

  
“There’s no doubt that there’s something trying to keep me away from the gate at this point,” Lance sounded a bit more wearier now. “My watch has just stopped working so I don’t know what time it is.” Jack had heard of weird things happening to time devices in the woods out there. If he thought it was safe to go, he’d go up and test out some of his time distortion theories. “I can’t really see the sun from this thicket, it’s hard to tell. I checked my compass to ensure I was… What the-”

  
The chanting was starting to intensify reminding Jack of some of the nightmares he’d gotten just before Sammy’s abduction when things were bad. Then a new voice appeared over the headset “Turn. Back. Now.”

  
Jack knew that voice, he’d heard it before on calls he had received. He shuddered remembering those phone calls. He’d tried to get Sammy to listen to them, something to make the other man believe him. But Sammy wouldn’t listen, or he wouldn’t hear the voice. Jack hadn’t understood it, he still didn’t know why Sammy had been unable hear that haunting voice.

  
“My fu-” Ben hit the bleeper button. “compass is literally spinning like a top. There’s something evil in these woods. You can feel it in the air. It’s palpable.”  
  
Jack could see that Ben wanted to stop the tape, knew that he was uncomfortable with it. But Jack had to know. It was like a drug for him. He had spent so much time researching Perdition Woods and the Gate back in Denver, and now it was close and this man- Lance- he had gone. No matter how ill thought out or naïve his plan had been.

  
“It’s so cold.” There seemed to have been a time gap between Lance’s previous statement and this one. “I’ve descended a great deal since the initial crest of the ridge it seems. I saw what appeared to be-”

  
He was cut off by that voice again. The voice from Jack’s nightmares hauntingly whispering Sammy’s name over and over again. “Last. Warning. Mortal!”

  
“Turn it off.” Ben pleaded. He reached over to hit the stop button before Jack could prevent him from doing so but the tape kept playing.

  
“What the Fu-” Ben barely hit the bleeper in time “Is that?”

  
Then came the scream. A chilling and haunting scream that Jack wasn’t sure if it was one of the shadow creatures that Lance was likely seeing or Lance himself. It was hard to tell from the recording. More of the weird sounds and voices that Jack used to get voicemails seemed to get louder and louder as if whatever was hunting Lance was getting closer.

  
After a few seconds Lance came back on, he was breathing heavily as if he was running, trying to outrun whatever it was that was chasing him. “It’s after me. I- I don’t know what that was. I went to look in this cove here. I think I’m just going to wait it out till morning. I’m wet, I’m cold, I caught my jacket in the bush. Jesus. My- my phone is missing. God damnit It really is just you and-”

  
“Me!” The nightmare voice was the loudest it had been.

  
“No! Help me! Please!” Lance cried out, and then there the sound of someone running, then more screaming, and then… nothing. The tape just stopped.

  
In his mind Jack could see Sammy being swallowed up by shadows, his mouth moving but with no words coming out. He heard those words in his dreams every night. _‘Why Jack?’ ‘Help me, Jack’ ‘Jack, please’_

  
“Jack, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen the apparition of Abe Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth along with Mrs. Kilpatrick.” Ben asked.

  
“I- uh- it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, Ben.” Jack said trying to recover. He knew that the blood had drained from his face, he could feel it in his cheeks. Could feel his heart thumping. “Could I have that tape?”

  
“Seriously, dude, are you alright? You don’t look well. Are you sure you should be writing a book on Perdition Woods anyway? You haven’t been up there have you?”  
  
“No, I haven’t been anywhere near Perdition Woods or the Gate,” Jack said honestly. He’d driven up to the parking lot of the hiking trails, but that was as close as he’d gotten. He’d heard the whispers then, beckoning him to hike up the mountains, to go into the woods. That Sammy would be there.

  
Putting his car in reverse and driving away from that parking lot had been one of the hardest things Jack had ever done. He just- he wanted to be with Sammy again. But not if Sammy couldn’t be in this world too, and he would never want Sammy to have to live here without him.

  
“Good, I don’t think I need to tell you that those woods are evil.” He didn’t.

  
Any other time Jack might have ribbed with him and asked if Ben had ever been in those woods, but he just didn’t have the heart to. Not after the hiker. “Do you think he made it out?” Jack asked quietly.

  
“He didn’t, there’s a missing persons out for one Lance McCoy.”

  
Jack pulled off his headphones. “Do you think we could go to commercial; I think I need a break.”

  
“Yeah, sure, buddy,” Ben smiled at him as he hit the button for the next commercial queued up while Jack stepped out of the booth.

He found himself walking out of the tiny building that was the radio studio to stand outside under the still dark night sky surrounded by the shadows of trees on top of a mountain. It was nice, the early October air was crisp and cool, nothing like the Octobers he used to experience down in Tampa where it would still be in the nineties and at least eighty percent humidity up until Thanksgiving, sometimes later.

  
Jack took a deep breath, hoping the chill air would help clear his dark thoughts. He was here, he was in King Falls, he was working with Emily on getting Sammy out of the Void. Not that Emily knew the exact reason he needed background stuff on the Devil’s Doorstep or Perdition Woods. No one did, they all bought into his lie he told on the first night about the book he was writing. The reason he had decided to come to King Falls.

  
One day he would solve the mystery of the Gate, of the book, and he would have Sammy back in his arms. And he would never let that man leave them either.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading this, I didn't expect to have the next one out so soon but I needed a break from school work. I'm not sure when the next one will come out, soon I hope. Also big shout out to @Kingfallstranscripts on Tumblr for having Episode 11 transcribed, it help me out at points when it was hard to make out what Lance McCoy was saying over audio.


End file.
